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No Man of Her Own (1932), which has nothing to do
with the better-known 1950 film of the same title,
deserves, well, to be better known! Universal Home
Entertainment's new DVD should help in that department.
It's strictly a no-frills affair, with just an added
introduction by Robert Osbourne, but that introduction
explains how this picture was the only one on which
Clark Gable and Carole Lombard ever worked together.
With Gable at MGM and Lombard at Paramount, it never
happened again.

In the film, Gable plays a con man with a smooth system
of bilking unsuspecting suckers of their dough via fixed
card games with his con artist friends. He's also
strictly a love-'em-and-leave-'em kind of guy, much to
girlfriend Dorothy Mackaill's dismay. When a suspicious
cop turns up the heat, Gable decides to hide out in a
small town until things cool off. There he discovers
Carole Lombard as the town librarian, bored to death and
yearning for adventure. ("Oh boy, is she a handful," a
magazine vendor says of her.) Their flirtatious banter
in the library is the movie's high point of sexy
romantic comedy. Everything clicks in this scene, most
of all the two stars' chemistry. Lombard suggests a
book by Shakespeare, and Gable responds, "Some nights
you just don't FEEL like Shakespeare..." When he asks
her to climb a ladder to get a book for him, and he
takes the opportunity to look up her skirt, we know
we're in serious pre-Code territory. The whole movie is
worth watching for this hilarious sequence.

Before we know it, Gable has taken Lombard as his bride
back to Manhattan, where he tries to keep private his
shady way of making a living. (His apartment's fantastic
fold-out bar must also be mentioned!) At the one-hour
mark, the movie definitely loses some steam as it turns
into more of a drama, but Lombard's heartfelt
performance does much to maintain our interest.
Unfortunately, the movie does suffer from an
unsatisfying final fadeout.

Still, the majority of No Man of Her Own is a
delightful, sexy, funny romp that should please fans.
Pre-Code chances to show the stars in their underwear
are not wasted (in Lombard's case she's also wearing
high heels), and one sequence in a church creates fine
comedy entirely from a series of glances - most
impressive.

Gable and Lombard are so good together that it is truly
a shame they were never paired on screen again. The
future lovebirds were each married at the time they made
this and by all accounts did not engage in any
hanky-panky on the set. By the end of the decade, of
course, they'd be married to each other. It's
undoubtedly just the magic of the movies, but it seems
plain why they ended up together when, in this film,
Gable says to Lombard, "That twinkle in your eye. Wrap
it up for me, will you?"

Universal's DVD has a few light scratches now and again,
but nothing too bad. Sound is fine.